


Silver Bells and Cockle Shells: Meenah in the Era of Benevolent Rationality

by RainofLittleFishes



Series: The Era of Benevolent Rationality [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternian medical technology, BellCurveBent, Bureaucracy, Classism, Growing Up, Hemospectrum Shift, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Oviparous Trolls, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Pregnancy, Troll Anatomy, Troll Culture, Troll Government in Any Incarnation is Entirely Too Involved in its Citizens' Reproductive Processes, hand-waved sciencification, helmsmen aftermath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-15
Updated: 2014-11-15
Packaged: 2018-02-25 08:48:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2615648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainofLittleFishes/pseuds/RainofLittleFishes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the 59th Sweep of the Era of Jade and Teal Benevolent Rationality, a Tyrian, possibly the last Tyrian, assumed her adult duties. Two sweeps later: </p><p>Your name is Meenah Peixes, you’re probably ten sweeps old, and your bulge is something like 20 percent for hire. The Consortium already has contractual leverage on at least the other 80 percent.</p><p>Or, In Which There Are No Real Villains, But Trolls Know That Apathy Is Far Worse: Meenah & Kankri's Moirallegiance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silver Bells and Cockle Shells: Meenah in the Era of Benevolent Rationality

There’s a knock on your shitty basement flat door and you tense for a moment and pause your game before you reflexively remember that Kankri had messaged you a few hours prior. You check the time – half past his shift change, two and a half to dawn, and open the door with a grin more reel than usual.

“Shell-o, Cherrypie!”

“Ah, Meenah, it is good to see you as well,” your tiny more-or-less friend returns. If you’re honest with yourself, which you try to avoid, he’s your best, and possibly only, friend. Your dock-dwelling ne’er-do-well frenemies might toss you the odd job or go drinking or knock boots but they’re not exactly the _reliable_ sorts.

You wave him in and manage to get him to shuck his outer layer, the coat taking up your only chair, and bully him into starting a two player with you. He’s stubborn, but you are too, and you’ve been working very hard to train him to play before getting to business. It’s only polite. Your hive, your rules. Everywhere else, you’re on someone else’s. You think he might just be humoring you, but if anyone would get it, he would.

You ruffle his hair because you can, squish him into you with a one armed hug, because you can, because you want to, because he bleeds his pale quadrant out in a hundred different nightly duties, but no one else touches him because they want to know what he needs.

You miss the sweeps when you were of a size and could gently wrestle each other. You play growl and he laughs, turns to you and hugs you back. You run your hands from scalp to neck to the length of his spine, once, twice, thrice. You circle your hands back to work at the knots in his neck and he sighs, relaxes into you so that he’s still standing on his own feet, but his weight is mostly on you. You really want to pick him up, just hoist him under the arms and cradle his full weight, feel the pressure of his body and his trust, but while he’d let you do it, you don’t think he’d enjoy it. You might heckle him for any number of things, but there is one that is emphatically off limits.

“Anything else?” you ask.

“Mmm” is the noncommittal reply. You step back just enough that he shifts to take his weight back.

You beat him at a racing game, stop for a meal out of your dinky kitchen, and heckle him into starting a multiplayer server-linked quest. His hands are deft but ridiculously tiny on the controls and you no longer laugh the first few times he can’t reach a button in time to prevent some lonely fleetie from owning him. You bought him a soft set of wriggler controls for him three Hatching Nights ago but he refuses to use it.

*

His Seventh Hatch Night was just two nights after the Consortium decreed that he be blocked from adult molt until further study. He was scheduled the night after his Hatch Night for the surgery to implant hormone blocks. He was already on the sedatives, the antibiotics, the antifungals. He was stunned, and hurt, and angry, and he couldn’t be less than calm in front of the Dolorosa, the medicullers, his coworkers, his colleagues on the Jade forums.

You had been thrilled that his eyes had just started to fill in the week before, little bubbles of two-toned red jewels set in the silver of his irises. You were already a head taller and had hoped that he would catch up now. Since the growth of your limbs started to sprint past his, you could wrap him in your arm span without trouble and he didn’t really stand a chance to struggle free against your extra two stones of weight. Your fingers likewise had raced past in growth so that you exactly fit the inherited sets of controls from the Dolorosa’s state allotment. You had been saving up for three perigees to afford the wriggler set and gave it to him before you knew the cause of his distress.

It is the only time he has ever thrown something at you.

Your first streaks of fuchsia started to come in a week later.

You are terribubble with people.

*

You can’t betray someone if they don’t trust you. This is the closest you will ever come to hating the Dolorosa.

*

It’s four hours past sunrise when he conchs out sprawled on the mess of pillows and beanbugbag chairs. You toss a blanket over him, sign off with a “later b-eaches!” and watch him sleep. He worked a full shift last night but you’re still fresh and wide awake. He’s the warmest troll you’ve ever met. You can say this conclusively because at this point you have been on pretty intimate terms with most trolls that you have met.

You shift over and toast a side against him and start up your palmtop. When you start to get drowsy, you flip over, scoot into the pile under him, and pull him across your middle. It’s a well-practiced maneuver and he doesn’t wake up. You link your arms at the small of his back. One blunt horn is nudged against your collarbone, and his arms are draped over your shoulders, and you know that his tiny pearl nails are perfect little dots reflecting the glow of the dozing gamegrubs. His legs have fallen open at the shift and his knees flank your thighs, toes not even reaching halfway past your knees. You cradle your buoy and drift off to sleep. His breathing is steady with a faint rasp that never disappears. It becomes the pull of tides and crash of breakers. You dream of holding sunlight that doesn’t burn.

Recuperacoons are for wimps.

*

It’s still two hours to dusk when you wake up with your head in his lap, the sensation of blunt fingertips raking through your hair. There are braids in the side facing him. You turn over to let him get the other side and when he doesn’t start immediately, you curl in and stealth attack his sweater-clad ribs. You blow a bubble on his wriggler pale skin.

He pulls at his sweater but his involuntary laugh is your prize and you’ll never tell him how you hoard them like pearls. You probably don’t need to, but you still wish you had the courage. You are both bleached and incomplete copies of your ancestors. You will never be more. You don’t want to be her. You’ll shred anyone who tries to make Kankri into _him_.

Your apartment’s shitty but serviceable for your needs. It lets you squeeze out a pretty generous budget for food, which is a relief, because the state safetynet paks give your fine seadweller bod hives. You wonder if it’s intentional, or maybe just you, but you don’t know any seadwellers you would trust to ask.

Most of the surviving seadwellers in the city left after the Summoner’s Rebellion. More returned to the oceans or stars after the Benevolent Reformation. The ones left mostly stick to their clades. A few old ones handfasted to their jobs are slowly mummifying in a few minor but necessary bureaucratic posts that no one else wants to deal with. There are more in the fleet, which takes a more prosaic approach to the necessities of meritocracy in vacuum. The newbie last perigee is the only one you’ve met in your age group.

Kankri placates you with a long thin braid to balance out your unattended side, then the two of you toast precooked searoaches over the heating element and eat them still standing up. Clean up is over quickly, then he gets down to business.

It’s just as well that you’re the only Tyrian, so far as you know, because selling that is what keeps you in games and searoaches, and out of the system that would love to see you culled to a Teal that would keep you in line. You’re a free b-each and don’t need no spawn-shore cramping your style.

“Ah, Meenah, I had a private contract to discuss with you.”

“Kinda guessed, ShortStuff, what’s up? Or should I say, who’s down for getting jibby with it?” Your wiggle your eyebrows at him and startle a laugh out as he covers his eyes and pretends it didn’t.

“Yellow, our age, the sponsor and contributor is his Teal matesprit.”

You can’t help but look up because of the way he said it. That’s younger than the usual, but it also brings you the usual dissonance when you look at him and know he’s your age like he’s always been but still wearing the same adolescent gray eyes in the same wriggler padded face. In his mind he is an adult. Truthfully, more than you are. Physically, he’s maybe eight sweeps, like he’s not far from maturation but still shella kinky to be considering anything more than a bit of virginal papping if you’re on the other end of the adult molt divide.

“I’ve forwarded the details to your palmtop. The contract would, of course, be officially registered, but the details would remain private.”

He means officially private, you don’t pretend that someone can’t trace how much hits your account, especially if they know the source, and the parties would all be in the official contract. It’s why you usually angle for modest contracts with handshake provisions. A gill’s got to cultivate her net of contacts somehow.

You read through the contract. Mituna Captor, formerly Mituna Captor Pyrope, formerly Mituna Captor, was hatched in the same sweep as both you and Kankri and now he’s going to brood his own grubs and be a responsible lusus-ancestor-caretaker. You are way too young to do the same because you are in no way ready. Kankri’s too young for reasons you’re sick of thinking of.

The redacted medical file, prepared by Kankri from the exhaustive complete one he’s researched from records, interviews, and a physical exam, indicates a potential psi reading so high that some shipwright must have had hysterics when he pursued immersive game programming instead and immersed himself in the usual accompanying sideline of competitive bee breeding. It’s unrefined but clearly ranks between Class 1 ColonyArk Prime and Dreadnought. No mid-class Annihilator would have been wasted on this one.

Latula’s sweeply donation is listed as completed without note, but they’ve paid the exemption fine for him since he completed adult molt. Considering how desirable Mituna’s contribution would be considered, even unproven, the fines must be pretty steep. Latula’s either loaded, or they have very specific priorities. If there exists such a thing as a Jade engineerist they must cry themselves to sleep each daycycle. Good on them both.

He’s clearly of the Psionic’s line and while that one’s fate isn’t a matter of public record, ears to the ground and air conclude that there’s a not uncommon bit of slurry smuggling by outgoing crew members of the twice renamed flagship.

This is not a great leap of intelligence considering many of the resulting grubs carry the Captor designation despite their “donation lineages unknown” tag. Mituna’s lineage link only lists the side of his greenblooded brooder who was, sure enough, retired from the _BR Adamantine Embrace_ eleven sweeps back. The former brooder’s listed as an independent hive contractormentor on the west continent, and backup emergency contact behind Latula Pyrope and a Meulin Leijon.

The Psionic must be pushing thirty-one decasweeps , at least eight decasweeps of borrowed time for a Yellow, even the most powerful on record, but he still throws quality grubs. You hope your ancestress is rolling in the pit of whatever beast ate her ashes. Whether the flagship is just that well-engineered or her Life powers were no joke, he’s outlasted her, for all the good it did him.

You carefully don’t think about how the Psionic may or may not be the last helmsman to be left under after the decree of the Summoner’s Revolution. You don’t consider if it is worse to be awake and aware of all he lost, or unconscious, and perhaps, still dreaming of things both good and bad. There have been millennia of helmsman before, and are likely to be after, and there is nothing that you can do.

You haven’t asked Kankri if he knows what the Empress got up to on her ship full of conscripts and officers under command, if she was hedging her bets for the production of high-powered psionics and conscripting crew or prisoners into brooding her next helmsman. Without stimulated expression, a helmsman’s slurry will accumulate until it triggers a sloughing cycle, and the weaknesses of the flesh can contribute to gradual slowing and ticks in the ship’s systems. And, of course, a psionic strong enough to power a helm is a loss to the general genetic pool if they only contribute once before they are installed.

Modern helms are designed to be disconnected as necessary, a necessity for a now voluntary position, and many of the newest mid to large ships have multiple helmsmen with overlapping shifts. Empire helms weren’t designed for volunteers or removability, but the crew would have had to attend to the biological functions that the hookups can’t fully handle. Squandering such potent grubjuice would have been uneconomical. You don’t doubt that, awake or not, the Psionic has had more partners than any other troll short of the Marquis DuSade, or, depending on her proclivities, the old Empress, may she boil.

There are plenty of things about Alternia about which you do not ask Kankri, for fear of the answer.

The contract is generous. Mostly boilerplate, outside of the specifications for the brooder’s comfort and safety that there be no more than two grubs at a time. The timeline is at will.

Your palmtop dangles from your fingers.

Kankri’s soft voice interrupts your musing.

“They’re good people, Meenah. I’ve met them before this. They’re regular temporary hosts so the wrigglers would be exposed to trolls outside of their castes. Latula owns and runs the university’s primary hivestem, steady, permanent work in a good section of the city. She’s not ambitious but she’s no slouch – hivestem records and neighborhood gossip both conclude that she runs a casual but uncompromising ship. She protects what’s in her care. She’s five sweeps his senior and he choose her as his culler when the system decided he spent too many days in a row coding without washing or taking equalizers.”

You snort. If that was the standard for culling, more Yellows would be culled, and Blues too, as well as a not inconsiderable selection of others from all castes. The obsessive nature of born vocationalists has been bred into your kind for tens of millennia. It’s not like the Consortium can clean it out with six decasweeps of selective matchmaking and breeding. And it’s not like they should, considering someone has to keep the fleet and on planet infrastructure going, and it’s not the person on the bridge pointing at the next planet to harvest that’s fixing the engine.

“Mituna’s been working on immersive game programming for a private company with a contract for military simulations. He recently shifted to independent consulting contracts with several companies. He’s an apiarist, as you could probably guess. As I mentioned, I’ve met them before. He might be making his income from the contracts, but he truly has a gift with the bees. I am no expert in the matter, but he has several varieties I have not previously seen and a firm grasp of both academic bee genetics and practical husbandry.

“Meenah. You know my interviews are thorough, so when I tell you she was his culler, but it was for the benefit of the system and not the two of them, you know I didn’t bite some line she’s dangling. He already had her wrapped around any of his smallest digits. The emancipation went through before his final molt. They’ve been officially equals since, and they’re still together.” His voice softens. “She was caught in the Spots epidemic in sweep 49 BR and can donate but can’t brood.”

The spots epidemic, or Scintilla Berry Fever, swept through the two to five sweep olds a dozen sweeps ago, before you were hatched. It probably came from off planet but by the time anyone bothered to track it, the evidence was gone. The initial fatality rate was low but the reel damage went unknown until the survivors hit adult molt and any of ‘em jade or colder had a fifty/fifty chance of not being able to fill a fisherman’s thimble, let alone a bucket or a matesprit. None of the survivors are likely to ever brood either. They might as well be carrying rocks among their shameglobes for all the life their nooks will ever squeeze out.

Plenty of trolls might never want wrigglers. Plenty of trolls are peeved at the sweeply donation and the older ones dread the slurry drones more than Her Imperious Condensation’s skanky specter. But being involuntarily sterilized strikes an almost universal horror in your usually argumentative race.

There’s a distinction between the initial fatality rate and the final fatality rate because more than one troll decided they didn’t want to live with the shame. More than one performed death-by-unfortunate- traumatized-kismesis or murder-suicides against old revenge cycles that may have otherwise remained undisturbed.

The Jade Consortium was mostly upset about the civil disturbances. The Teal Legislancerists rather relished them and the resulting trials, but it left the both of them with a tangle of statistics that didn’t care to lie neatly into what was and wasn’t caused by the spots, the hysteria, and general trollhood. There are still suicides, even though the BR has started to track and try to assist the survivors.

Last sweep there was a bad batch of vaccine on the western continent. An Empire era mediculler inoculated wrigglers with a sun-spoiled batch of vaccine instead of filing the loss and requisition forms. There were ten cases of spots and mass hysteria out to the colonies. The public execution was televised over all non-emergency broadcasts. Some of Kankri’s staff had regarded the execution as good riddance to bad rubbish. A few had complained about missing the eelball game. You’re pretty sure he missed the broadcast re-reading the data on vaccine efficacy and trying to calculate herd immunity, just in case.

“Meenah, this would mean a lot to them.”

You’re already convinced but you let him wait a bit. The contract is generous, but it would be impolite not to wrangle. You’ve got your eye on a sturdy rumble bike in the third district. It’d be enough to get you out of the city and to a shore other than where the boats come in. When you’re drowning in the press of trolls and noise, your gills clamp with the need for open water.

State work is regular but the credits are only compatible with housing, utilities, clothing, and food. You’re two sweeps into your adult duties and your shitty apartment is already set for the next six. You’re scheduled at the clinic two to four times a perigee, depending on the state’s need, and the free slots on light perigees are your own. Private contracts are where you get your caegars, toys, and favors.

You type back a counteroffer and send it. Your palmtop beeps before you can set it down. They’ve accepted without haggling. Maybe you’ll get Kankri a side-carapace for your bike and drag him along.

*

The sterile white reproduction room is crowded with four trolls in it. The Yellow’s already on the table, but still clothed when you saunter in. He’s bigger than you thought, more muscular than most Yellows, crowned in a graceful set of double horns that makes something in you clench and hiss “ _mine!_ ” You have a pretty sharp nose for this kind of thing and he smells faintly of the pheromones at the peak of his fertility cycle, though it’s probably much stronger to his matesprit. The Teal is casually still, casually not tensed. You can smell stress and desperate hope rolling off of her.

The medical details behind the contract stated that they’ve been trying for the past sweep, not long really, but it doesn’t surprise you that they haven’t succeeded. It’s not just on her end. The half sterile types usually don’t manage on their own unless there’s been an injury to open one up.

It’s not impossible to manage with a sharp talon in just the right places, but anyone who tries stands a better chance of giving themselves an infection then a grub. There are specialized cutting worms but they’re not much better. The nook’s a pretty fiddly place to mess about trying to find and slice the right spot without doing worse damage. Most of the wrigglers in the city are gifts of this continent’s mothergrub. Most of the rest are gifts of your intervention.

You’re familiar with the birth rates and patterns of the city. You grew up knowing your job. You know that that this continent’s mothergrub has been waning for almost all of the seven decasweeps since the Summonerists assumed control. Her egg’s not due to hatch yet. You’re not allowed to know how long until it does, but you know it will take three decasweeps for the MaidenGrub to start taking slurry and another five to become a fully-fledged MotherGrub. That’s more than half a Rustie’s generously estimated lifespan. You know that before you, there had to be a least another Tyrian doing essentially what you’re doing, because the birth rates don’t jive otherwise. You’ve never met another Tyrian and don’t care to, but you still wonder what happened.

“Hey, B-eaches! You ready to get stuffed?” You greet. They’re not a state contract so they get the real Meenah Peixes. They betta appreciate it.

The Teal tenses. Kankri opens his mouth to mediate.

“Shell yeah!” Sallies back the Yellow, and he quirks his head forward and up and back, that marvelous double set of horns subscribing arcs that are far less a challenge than an invitation. The Teal snaps her mouth shut with a click of grinding teeth.

You totally want to collect this Yellow.

“Perhaps some introductions?” Kankri intervenes.

“Mituna, this is Meenah Peixes, she’ll be assisting you today. Meenah, Mituna Captor.”

“Tuna, baby! What a shrimply fishlicious name!” You can hear the Teal’s jaw clench.

“Latula?” Kankri dares to put a hand on her forearm and you can see her forcibly relax.

“This is Meenah, she’s very good at what she does.”

“Pyrope,” you acknowledge with nod.

The Teal looks you in the eye and extends a hand.

“Thank you,” she says, voice rough, and you’re surprised but decide that if she can troll up, you might respect her. Her handclasp is firm and dry, and she doesn’t try to play dominance games with her grip.

*

The procedure goes swimmingly. You’ve got a seeping set of symmetrical claw scratches over each shoulder, and he has a perfect pair of newly opened vacuolombs, as per the contract.

He’s eager and friendly and nuzzles at your rumblespheres and licks your throat, nibbles at your neck gills, makes a joke that you’re _welcome aboard_. You don’t touch back except to steady him, mindful of Latula behind him, but you don’t resist, you smile at his pun. His bulge is questing in the air but he’s careful not to encourage it. He arches a bit as you pierce and fill him and you stroke your hands down his sides and belly to settle him into letting the slurry do its work.

Latula takes his hands and he lies back on the table. Kankri slips the plug in as you withdraw in a bit of well-practiced choreography. You wrap yourself back up to leave through the adjoined ablution block. They don’t need you for the next parts and you’re sure Latula at least would appreciate some privacy later when it comes to the actual fertilization.

Mituna’s head lolls a bit and Latula dodges his horns with her own well-practiced movement. His eye glow has died down enough that you can see his pupils blown wide behind it, not an uncommon reaction to your stings. It looks like the couple on the table have eyes only for one another, as it should be, but the Yellow still jitters a bit with excited psionic energy.

“Hey, cap’tain, do you like the cut of my jib?” He’s still twitching in place and Latula tosses a blanket over him and winds it tightly enough that he relaxes reflexively.

“Everythin’s shipshape but your hold’s pretty full, buoy, best bee _beecalmed_ before you _capsize_.” He gifts you an absolutely delighted grin that you punned back his name and worked in the bees.

“Aye, aye cap’tain!”

“Hey, Kankri,” you hear as you leave. “This junk’s expecting landfall soon- better be ready to swab the deck!”

“I don’t listen to scuttlebutt,” he insists, and you can tell he’s still got his back turned to hide his smile.

You fucking love Yellows.

*

The first sweep of the assumption of your duties was crammed with all the state cases, lined up by order of their peak cycles and some esoteric sort of jockeying among the Jades that you’re happy to know nothing about. You did your thing and the Jades did their thing and they stopped pushing you to do more than eight newbies a perigee when the success rate went down. You weren’t sabotaging it, but evidently even your grubjuice needs a chance to recharge between rounds with some stranger’s final frontier. The requests have since died down to two to four a perigee, most of the time. The mothergrub’s still producing and not everyone wants (or should have) a wriggler. It’ll probably be at least a decasweep before any of your first timers will need to be topped off, much longer for the cooler shades.

Kankri isn’t allowed in the sacred presence of the declining Mothergrub, but by now he’s been helping the Dolorosa for five sweeps in her duties at the Practical Applications Practice Department , a division of the Reproductive Research and Development Office. Three have been spent shuffling forms and mopping, and the time since spent holding hands, papping faces, wrangling bulges, stuffing nooks, and monitoring egg development.

It’s been long enough that most of the local Jades have stopped grumbling. Quite a few have come around to regard him with the indulgent fondness, as if he’s a mascot more than a competent professional. There are other techs and tracking specialists that assiduously follow up with every brooder in the city, state or private. It is your unsurprising opinion that Kankri is the best, but there’s still plenty of room if any of the disapproving holdouts want to wrangle bulges, stuff nooks, and mop floors.

Kankri brings you your first private contracts when the onslaught of backlogged state cases trickles down to a steady rate. You had had the odd week or two to yourself, and tried out sex for the heck of it with a few strangers that didn’t mind your hue. You found it more fun than trying to not traumatize a stranger in as dispassionate a manner as possible, but less satisfying than a now rare night or day of Kankri’s undivided attention. Kankri neither approved nor disapproved, merely required (extensive) samples from you to be sure that you hadn’t picked up any opportunistic organisms or viruses. He might have invented a few more tests for the occasion. You probably would have started in on drinking next.

Kankri, your lodestar, your anchor, brings you those first private contracts and helps you select and negotiate. He won’t let you give him a percentage, says it’s a conflict of interest.

He deals with prospective brooders, their sponsors, their donors, the paperwork, the supplies requisitioning, the accounting of his time to personally follow-up. He does the work of two trolls at his clinic duties and another for the exhaustive background checks, medical checks, interviews, and reference interviews for your side business.

His palmtop is scheduled in a confusing panoply of back-to-back color blocks from dusk to dawn, and usually past it. He owns the most badass set of sun-protective flexiarmor you’ve ever seen in a size extra-large wriggler’s. You’re not sure he sleeps when you’re not looking.

For the last several sweeps, every three perigees, regular as a primsunbeetle, he’s filled out and personally submitted all thirteen forms to be reassigned to the vocational mediculler program for grub maturation, metamorphosis, and early wrigglerhood care. Or early wrigglerhood education. Or the nuturist novitiates, conventionally known as wriggler watchers, because all they need to do is keep the grubs from eating each other. The last of these is where they assign really stupid Jades who have no idea they’re among the wrigglers being watched. It wouldn’t do to have a Jade or Teal be on record as culled, but there are loopholes.

Even you know the forms by now: one form to resign, denied, three forms recommending other trolls for his newly vacated position, intricately researched, six references, two for each, the application form, and two references confirming his competence, one each from the Dolorosa and Magula Harrte, head of the Reproductive Research and Development Office’s Development branch, 218 sweeps and still without title.

Magula, precise and a bit snooty, doesn’t much care for trolls of flamboyantly irregular color, but she can’t deny his success rate or resist his theoretical papers and questions in the RRDO’s internal journalboards. She treats him with a blend of distaste and hunger. You’d worry about her if her entire being weren’t so impersonal about both.

He submits the thick packet without fanfare or histrionics, increasingly with an air of resignation, to his official supervisor, the Dolorosa. She takes them with equal solemnity to stamp and forward to the Cavern Caballistas.

His quarterly doomed resignations are personally responsible for the hire of twelve of the other sixteen current reproductive technicians, administerrors, and tracking specialists, every one personally trained and mentored and domineered into competence. They range from rust to a lone Indigo, from fourteen sweeps to 412, and are each and every one inevitably fiercely loyal to his altruistic reign of terror.

It has become a department ritual to watch the submittal and bet on the justification of denial, but it’s gotten predictable: “insufficient work experience”, (seven times, three each for mediculling and teaching, once for grubsitting), “shows history of commitment reluctance” (once), “final thesis incomplete” (three times, always in Magula’s precise and somehow snooty handwriting, despite that fact that he publishes to the internal journal of his free will without any benefit but scholastic curiosity and concern for his charges, and _there is no final thesis_ ). Then they tell him he’s too valuable to lose, five times and counting, regardless of his requested reassignment, and he sets his heels in.

He starts to fill the resignation form with reasons that the current system is inefficient, budgeting shortfalls and estimates of their drag on grub quality and quantity, perverse appeals to the Benevolence for gentler protocols for the treatment of state-employed brooders.

*

He follows all his cases through from implantation to laying and never once lays eyes on any of the resulting grubs.

At least, not until you start taking private contracts and adding a simple handshake clause to each one.

*

Your first private contract is a good way to start. The Magnemetrix is 100 sweeps, middle-aged for a Yellow, but past it for a helmsman wired in for 90 of them. Her ship, the _BR Golden Compass_ , formerly the _HIC Grievous Colloquist_ , is still planet-ported in the dry-docks for a complete retrofit, and in the age of Benevolent Rationality, psionics now too unreliable to be wired to even a smaller ship, the helmsman has been trollmanely retired. To what, is left to her own determination.

Her rigging is old school Empire Era and her retirement package hasn’t extended much past a long stay in medicated sopor and capping off her missing limbs and implanted wires. Prosthetics are covered but the standard issue is still pretty basic. The Rationality tries to avoid issues of unwieldy compensation and back pay.

The monetary part of her compensation is enough to cover either decent middling prosthetic upgrades or the deposit on your contract and some interest. And it is here that The Magnemetrix earns your respect before you meet her. She could have signed up for a state contract. It would have covered the initial opening and fertilization, food and rent, and, depending on clutch size, some portion of the rent thereafter. She could have hoarded the rest of her savings, but she’s an entrepreneur. Seven decasweeps a free troll only technically, she’s free of her wires for the first time and she’s not interested in climbing back into the state’s rig.

She’s combed the close-knit community of her shipmates and their clades and contacts and lined up back to back contracts within a cooperative of upper middleclass Blues in the mechannihilator district. They’re willing to pay three times the going rate for state generated wrigglers to get descendants of their own. The contract is renewable so long as all parties are satisfied. The Blues are satisfied not to have to wade through the redtape that adopting new wrigglers entailed, especially if they want specific genetics or hues. The Magnemetrix is satisfied that they don’t expect pailing, rump kissing, or cooking.

Her contract with the two of you states that if she has multiple viable vacuolombs, she wants them all opened, but no more than two to four fertilized at a time, at the reproductive technician’s professional discretion. Kankri relays your conditions that don’t go in the contract. She agrees and you waive the balance of your fee.

Kankri visits the Blues with a shoulder bag full of tiny vials and decanter worms, like Alternia’s tiniest, most adorable slurry drone.

He reports back with a shoulder bag full of meticulously labeled blue vials in five or six shades of blue. You’ve never done a study of the shades within the hues, but unless someone’s eating something funky, that’s definitely more than two shades.

“How’d they take it?” The Magnemetrix asks.

“There might have been handwringing, stress sweats, and a case of the vapors, but they delivered the goods.” He deadpans.

“Yeah,” she sighs, “that’s about how I thought it’d go. Better you than me, right? I might break ‘em.”

A swirl of yellow and gold sparks spins around her head, hiccups, and shimmers downward. The effect is like a theatrical faint.

“Doubtless,” he confirms, still deadpan, “but there’s still time.”

He logs in the vials and sets up the analysis on eleven. The results will be in by the time they’re needed and he’ll use it to check for abnormalities and harmonization rates before determining combinations. The fertilization process is as much art as science, and Kankri is very, very good at what he does.

The Magnemetrix has wide hips and an easy grin. Her voice is soft and her laugh hearty. She tells you to call her Meggie.

“All my crew do,” she tells you, like now you are too.

Her eyes are a gorgeous gold with clusters of tiny toxicity spots ringing her pupils. There are burnout scars sparking trails of stars down her cheeks and speckling her wide ridged horns. Her public records show not one but three burnouts in defense of her crew, the last involving a stroke and a seizure that snapped half her wires and left her ship to limp home on auxiliary power from an alien meet-and-greet gone wrong. She’s lucky to have survived. Her horns crest up and over her head and curve down to frame her face like symmetrical braids. The effect is wriggler cute when she smiles. You can imagine that her crew worked hard for a chance to see that smile again.

You get down to business and she strips without shame, psionics precise but flickering out at intervals, like a palsied limb. She piles her prosthetics with her shirt.

“They’re a bitch to clean,” she confesses. It’s matter of fact.

You help her scoot out of her pants and she helps you out of yours. That’s not part of your usual routine, but she’s paying you, not the state, so if this is what she wants and you don’t mind, so what? Kankri’s going to get an eyeful of your rump, but it can’t be worse that what he usually deals with.

You introduce your bits, untangle them and wiggle your fingers to distract her bulge as you slip in. She’s got her thighs hooked over the swell of your hips, courteously below your gillslits. She sits up a bit, the impressive gather of her abs a testament to her completion of the prescribed post-helmsman therapy exercises. Plenty of retired helmsmen never gain back any muscle. She places her forearms on your shoulders. You lean in.

“Can I kiss you?” she asks.

“Shore, pretty thing. No extra charge.”

She laughs into your mouth and there’s a friendly thrum in her chest.

You pet her face, her sides, the marvelous sweep of her rumblespheres, ribs, and muscle. You feel a bit odd, like there’s water draining from your fingertips, like her skin is thirsty. It’s different from both the state contracts and your one-day stands.

Your tendrils tense, sting, and contract. “Woo!” She exhales. It’s not a complaint. Her eyes widen and her pupils contract and dilate. You feel your tendril heads latch on one at a time, unfurling again, and a free one slips up her seedflap. You stay locked together for endless moments, until the pressure of your slurry subsides and you can feel your tendrils start to unlock.

Kankri, politely quiet the whole time, slips a gloved hand in as you retract and the plug slips in just in time to catch all but a few drops of your slurry.

“Enjoy the show?” She teases him.

“Alas, all reruns,” he returns.

“Pshoo. Boom.” She makes a little sound like the spacefleet ships in nightdramas. “The crew went down with the ship. All hands lost.” Her belly shivers with her laugh and she waves a stump, laser-engraved IDchit winking in the light.

The three of you end up watching reruns while the slurry does its work. You fake bully Meggie into scooting over and commandeer the table behind her. She leans back on you, wrapped in a blanket, and Kankri props up his wide trifold wafertop, usually reserved for paperwork and research, and perches on a stool. She lets you pet her sides and sighs when you run a thumb over the stiff bristle of her hair.

It’s growing back from a full shave, the implanted wires and now defunct sync sites caped with intricately etched metal caps, each set in ring of scar tissue. The caps are clearly a gift and not of state issue. There are four in her skull and another six that march down her spine. The _BR Golden Compass_ was an exploration and alien trade negotiation ship, carrying twelve crew, the captain, and one to three negotiaterrors depending on mission. You can recognize a different set or sets of hatch signs on each of her caps. You circle the largest spinal cap at the muscled curve where her back and neck meet.

“There,” she sighs, “Right there. It only itches when I think about it. But how do I stop thinking about it?”

You slide your palm up over the cap and your hand could span her neck. She relaxes into you. It’s easily more intimate that what came before. Your hand tingles and you think she must be using her psionics, but you don’t see any sparks.

It’s the lady’s choice, so you catch up on an Empire Era Teledrama series that was old before the Dolorosa was hatched: The Continuing Saga of a Valiant and Handsome Cerulean and His Bumbling But As Yet Inexplicably Unculled Brown Sidekick (see episode 15) as They Bravely Fight Their Way Through Alien Menaces Both Horrifying and _Strangely Tempting_ , Containing a Minimum of Two Flamboyant Cullings, Three Pailings, and a Pile scene per episode. May Contain Mammals and Abuse of Slurry. Not Suitable for Wrigglers under Three or Trolls of Any Taste Whatsoever.

Colloquially, it’s known as Space Sperminator for the last episode, which should have been the penultimate one, when the Blue sexes up one too many aliens and a mammalian queen collects him for her harem and implants him with her spawn. It was colony produced but most of the actormentors went underground before they could get culled in the old sense. It’s pretty clear the setup is for a live birth, but the never-to-be-filmed episode sadly leaves out whether the Blue survives his clutch of strange hybrid wrigglers. It’s terribad acting and you’re surprised how much it draws you in. J’casta, the mammalian queen, strangely troll-like, but lusus-pale from skin to hair to eyes, is well known to have an underground fetish following. She doesn’t have many lines, mostly overdramatic tripe, but her delivery in an over-voweled exotic accent is hypnotic. Skin smooth, hornless, thin unthreatening nails painted pearl white, whatever species she is, there’s been at least 900 sweeps of furtive self-papping and bulge abuse in response to the way she simultaneously hits the buttons for moirail, matesprit, and lusus.

Afterwards, you stay with them as Kankri drains your slurry, cleans her out, and feeds in the quadrapippette. You’re familiar with the process but you’ve never seen it outside of diagrams. The nookworm makes her wrinkle her nose and sigh. Kankri asks her if she’s alright.

“I’ve had worse,” she says, and you imagine a helmsman of any era has to put up with a lot of techs all up in their business.

She redresses and you hold her prosthetics up one at a time for her to snap her capped ends into.

“Thanks,” she says, unashamed and earnest. “For all of it really,” and she tosses her head a little to include Kankri.

“See you in two nights,” he returns.

“Anytime, cutie. Drop in if you need a dose of terribad acting. I have a lot to catch up on and the Blues have an unlimited broadticle package and huge screen. They’re using it for conference calls and schematics. What a shame.”

You don’t have time for the usually reflexive surge of jealousy at another reminder of his full schedule.

“You too, gorgeous.” The flash of her smile warms you. “I’m not sure how much of a sense of humor they have between ‘em. They don’t get out much, outside jobs, but they seem trainable.”

You wish her the best with her herd of Blues.

“I hope at least one of ‘em can cook,” she sighs. “Haven’t had anything but Sh’lake and ‘paks for too long.” She doesn’t mention how long before that she had nothing but biowires and perhaps water.

You hope they treat her like a queen.

*

It was the first time you felt like what you did was a gift.

*

Kankri loves the Dolorosa like she’s his lusus. He was culled directly from the caverns as a project by a cooperative of young Jades that cossetted him and pet him and ignored him like the tiny dyed alien primates on leashes trailing behind spoiled rich adolescents in the market.

He never outgrew his cuteness but he outlived their patience when he got to the “why” stage of wrigglerhood. Not the “why can’t I have another sweetbug” but the “why can’t I complete the next schoolfeeding?” and “why would ‘it just is’ be sufficient rationalization for anything?”

They wanted his exotic warmth and his easy affection. They weren’t prepared for the steal-trap of his mind or the overflow of his unrestrained, unjaded heart. Jades don’t take to being out-benevolented well. Then again, you don’t take to sharing him well either. He is ungrudging. You hold his grudges for him. You wonder if he would have been better off, or worse, had he been bought by Teals. You don’t like to think on how you would have been, without him.

*

You don’t like the Dolorosa.

She rescued you and you owe her. When you were fished out of the ocean, a hissing, spitting, thrashing knot of hair and limbs and blood and snot, you should have been registered as permanently dangerous, to be culled in perpetuity.

Shivering in a padded cage, bruised and weighted as you’d never been, wracked with coughs in the dry callous air, your four sweep old self was an unthinking, savage, desperate animal surrounded by voices you couldn’t understand.

Your monstrously strong seadweller frame shredded the padding and wracked the bars with divots and would have mutilated anything you could reach. You would have started with yourself if another target hadn’t presented herself.

The Dolorosa took you in.

Kankri tamed you.

*

You don’t like the Dolorosa.

She treated you fairly. She treated you like child when others saw a monster. She has treated you like an adult when others still see an impaired child. She coddled Kankri when he needed it. She refused to cosset him when it would have ruined him. She taught you both _almost_ everything you wanted to know and a _shell_ of a lot you didn’t.

She is everything a Jade should be. She is everything most will never attain.

She’s trained Kankri as her successor, her second, in everything, and it aches in you to know that he will never be fully accepted in a Jade’s place.

And yet.

*

If Teals are the Swift Blade of Justice, Jades are the Deliberate Scalpel of Cruel Necessity. Kankri’s undetermined state is both better and worse than if they had scooped out his glands and his bits and stitched him back up and had done with it.

As it waits now, he may or may not be judged a valuable, or at least sufficient, addition to the general incestuous slurry, or a worthy experiment in deliberate matching. Or the decision may simply be delayed until it is a moot point, an academic “what if” in the footnotes of the summary of his closed life record.

This lack of closure is the cruelty, a clademate lost to the dark, whose ship may or may not return, the trolls left behind to grieve, or stay true with only the company of a pestilent hope.

Kankri has always been ferociously intelligent, stupidly kind and diligent. He has always been striving to prove himself.

And yet.

You can trace the advent of his almost desperate industry to when he woke deep into the day after surgery, still hours before he was supposed to, and needed to check his work messages and run research requests. There was a terrible despair in his eyes, like at any moment he might just give in and have done with it, the possibility of rallying to this next challenge, this next insult, just too exhausting.

Without argument, you propped him up against you, his head bobbing as he fought the aftereffects of all the chemicals in his blood. You fed him ice chips, typed and proofed his dictation, held the wastebasket for his thin streams of bile. He needed to prove he was still himself.

Under the bandages, there were shaved patches of scalp where they went in to set the primary hormone neutralizers, neat rows of tiny pincer bugs locking the outermost layers down. Between his ribs there were thin subcutaneous wormstruts of hormone dispensers and meters.

When he slept in snatches of a few minutes at a time, still fighting not to go under, he woke with a hiss or gasp or raspy scream of horrorterrors.

Sometimes he didn’t recognize you, or called you by a different name, or asked what he did to fail you. There were apologies, pleas for forgiveness, pleas for mercy. It was like he didn’t recognize his own name, or thought he was someone else.

His warmth rose to a fever and when you sponged around his bandages, he screamed a beast’s high, thin, haunting death scream. He twisted in your grip like a skinned eel, too pained to stop writhing, further pained by it. You held him close to keep him from hurting himself, your arms long enough to wrap over, around him. You tried to cool him against your skin without the shock of the water, tried to imagine that your cold was the water sinking into him.

You have never been more terrified in your life.

His fever climbed until the wormstruts twitched under his skin.

You had read the release papers, the possible side effects, and you prayed to anything that might listen that he be spared the seizures, the possible strokes, the possible loss of memory. The possible loss of his brilliant mind burning in his suddenly tiny burning body. You had cursed, made bargains, and finally just prayed.

You didn’t know if you believed in any of them, goddesses, gods, spirits, powers, ghosts of mortal trolls, horrorterrors of the depths and skies and far-flung spaces, but you promised anything, everything, and you would have gladly paid any price in your own blood or any other’s if they would only do this one thing.

When the fever broke, he looked small, and tired, and never more dear. He felt like your naked bloodpusher spilling in your arms.

*

The Dolorosa did not visit.

*

You have never seen him in front of any other but you without being concealed from view from neck to forearm to ankle.

*

There is little you can do for him.

*

The Dolorosa refuses to use her influence on his behalf. You’re not sure if you hate her for his pain, perpetually stymied in his goals while perpetually arrested at a perfect, incomplete seven sweeps, or if you hate her because even in this she may be protecting him.

*

You don’t like the Dolorosa, but, mostly, you respect her. That’s more than you can say for most trolls.

*

You wouldn’t trust your back to him, but the Jongoleur is good for a laugh. He’s a tall thin Indigo with crumpled horns and not-quite fully formed ear fins, popular on the docks among the working class and the folks that prey on them. No one knows quite how he supports himself. His hair is braided neatly and his bangs shadow his eyes. His paint is a streak of white slashed across his lips from mid-cheek to the opposite side of his chin. The rest of his face is naked. He’s exactly the kind of troll that would ask the Dolorosa, “Why so sad?”

He takes pleasure in the shock both his nudity and words instill, but he’s not always rapping out uncomfortable truths. Booze makes him pretty mellow. You always buy him a glass of the house swill and he always acts happy to see you. Tonight at the Rusty Pail he’s already a few pitchers of Eurvvian beekin mead in and feeling philosophic, or at least pretending it. He raises a finger and flicks you a salute as you enter and order him another.

Throughout the history of Alternian expansion, there’s been a rough list of milestones that each conquest or colonization follows. They occur more or less in order and you can judge the progress of civilization by what step has been most recently reached.

First there’s discovery and subjugation, possibly a longer period of resistance before further subjugation, and then, around the time that the construction drones move on from fortresses and barricades, to the more flourishy bits of infrastructure glorifying the state, there’s a public bar run by a Rustie. Not that there wasn’t already a Rustie bar, but you know things are ofishal when it’s public to the natives.

This is usually the first sign of civilization that the locals regard as any form of progress. Somewhere in the following steps of civilization there is experimentation with local fermentation, and following that, a pipeline back to the teeming Alternian black-markets, and occasionally the legal ones as well. This part is usually the first, and often only thing, that is regarded as a benefit of expansion by the majority of trolls.

Quality and policy vary, but most Rustie watering holes have good alcohol, cruddy furniture, and an intolerance for violence or excessive stupidity on the premises. (You wonder if the Empress’s biggest issue with Rusties was that a shorter lifespan often contributes to more respect for what time one has, that is, Rusties tend to be practical. The Empress was good at ruthless, but it didn’t always coincide with _smart_.)

There are plenty of establishments that few trolls would dare disturb, less the formidable proprietors disturb their faces or internal organs in return, and the other patrons would consider it entertainment. Rustie bars are the exception in that the patrons would take out the trash without the bartender lifting a claw. There are plenty of jokes about Rustie bartenders being everyone’s moirail. It’s not entirely untrue. The Rustie brings you a glass of water with your order without asking.

The Jongoleur’s hatchsweep is not publicly available. He’s pre-Dolorosa and looks far younger than her. This is meaningless as Indigos might see 12,000 sweeps. They’d be mad as a millinminer, but that wouldn’t be much of a change for some of them.

You came to ask about the Signless from someone who’s older than the redactions and re-writing. You came to ask him about the troll behind the Sufferist scriptures. The Dolorosa has everything you want to know locked in her head, but she’s also moving in accordance to her own goals and you don’t know what they are. You might confront her, but it will be a battle of wits and luck and things you shouldn’t know to startle some truth out of her mask, and right now you are still sadly unarmed in the last.

He’s feeling generous, for all the good it does you. All you get is falderal.

“My wild dervish rose!” He exclaims, and leans in like he might dare to pat your back. Like shell you’re going to let him. He might stab you to remind you to be careful and think it a gentle suggestion.

“Peixes to you, you tumbler.” You toss your horns in his direction and he clasps the hand to his chest.

“Your name is a beholden bell hooked in my bloodpusher. It would shatter its cage to call you once by your name!”

The end of this trails off wistfully and he ducks his head to look up at you through his bangs and judge your reaction. Coincidently, this brings his horns to bear at you.

“I’m not beholden, whatever you call me,” you insist, “your payment’s in full right here.” You flick the stein. “And if that was a solicitation to my ancestor you can take it up with whatever beastie ate her ashes and died of it.”

His hurt look fades like the night into day and he goes earnest, or something like it.

“See, life’s a joke and then you die, that’s the basic tenant of The Church of Mirth, or any religion. The Sufferer got it. The Church of Death gets it. The rest is arguing over semantics.”

Here he flaps his frilled, not-quite-finned ears in a pretty decent approximation of a seadweller’s flick of, “eh, it’s annoying, but wwhat can ya do?”

“Or semaphores. Can’t keep the two straight when they’re both crooked up the nook. Ain’t a honest troll in the city, and if they tell you they is, they’re lying. Or dead. The dead don’t bother to lie. Gotta love the Church of Death.”

His almost naked face is compelling and his voices drops lower and flattens, the reciprocating membranes in his chest utterly still.

“Wee pasha, Gl'bgolyb’s girl, Czarina Starina, where is your Kismeking? Loose ends flap in the wind. Will you tie down the circle? Or will you fly away, little skylark monarch, and let the ship sink?”

Your horns prickle. It’s not chucklevoodoos.

The reverberation starts back up and he continues, voice jaunty again, like there was never a change.

“In Summonery: The punchline’s all the same but there’s a bottomless pit of disagreements over how to deliver the joke. Are we now trolls dreaming of flutterbeasts or flutterbeasts about to wake? It’s like, you have the answer, but you still don’t know the question. 42 ways to pail a hoofbeast and it still won’t fool a drone!”

“Thanks,” you mutter, sure this was awash.

You push back your chair.

“You should try the archives,” he says. “Nothing’s ever quite dead there.” And his voice is dead serious.

“I thought you said nothing’s truthful ‘til it’s dead.”

“Meh. Truth’s relative anyway. So’s dead, really. And you’re looking for logic from a Fool? Who’s the fool then?”

His head lolls a bit and he kicks back in his chair and falls over drunk, buzzing with the bees of Eurvvia all the way to the floor. He rolls a few times, springs up, and bounds up to stalk off, steady as the Orphaner’s misbegotten Obelisk. Between the metronome of his stride, his braid flicks like the tail of pleased huntbeast.

It looks like you need to make a trip to the librariquary. It’s full of dust and you hate sneezing like you hate hiccupping, with each and every one of your gills. Argh. Only for Kankri. And for Kankri, it is little enough.

*

You second private contract tries to break your bloodpump.

The brooder-to-be is a Green, eight decasweeps, still physically young. The donor is a Brown on the rust end of it, bent at the spine and clearly in the kind of pain that won’t be healing. They are sweepmates and matesprits and have been together their entire lives. They remember one another as wrigglers, as young conscripts. You could easily mistake them for moirails. They are grave and courteous and hold hands the entire time. Tre wants a grub to remember her by. They thank you.

You imagine Kankri, still caught somewhere between young and old, but bent in the Brown’s weary frame in a few all too short sweeps, and you do not cry.

It’s a good thing you’re a stone cold b-each.

*

After that, every private contract has its own joys and tragedies and humor or oddity, but few of them are so sharp and clear and aching.

*

It’s only two weeks after the fertilization before Kankri drags you with him on one of his follow-up visits to the Magnemetrix. You do indeed watch terribad teledramas and her soft wicked comments make you laugh so hard you think you’ll bust a gill. She glows with a radiance that is neither psionics nor bioluminescence. The three of you gently terrorize the Blues, most of whom are shy but fond of her, and wary of Kankri. You picture his slurry shakedown and wonder if he made them present their pails for hygienic inspection prior to donation and reminded them to wash their hands.

They do indeed treat Meggie like a queen.

There are elaborate piles of pillows in all sorts of beautiful and excessive patterns and materials, in drifts trailing to and up the couch.

There are plates of fresh fruit, and several of elaborately arranged vegetables and thin seared meats. One plate appears to be a reconstruction of the Bridge of Raging Hoofbeasts in root vegetables. There is a spicy and wonderful roll of seaweed, fish, and watergrains, sliced to reveal the careful arrangement of her sign.

The overall effect is that of offerings to their planetbound goddess and placations to avert the wrath of a natural disaster. Typhon Kankri. You don’t rate comment, just a respectful nod before the block clears out at Kankri’s visitation. It’s refreshing.

He starts his check in with questions: “How are you feeling? How is the living situation working out? Any pains? Any problems?” She forwards him her nutrition and exercise logs and startles a laugh out him: the former’s linked with pictures of five more root vegetable buildings and bridges, and more delicate arrangements of translucently thin meats, some arranged as animals, some for color, and at least three are math puns.

Kankri takes measurements and gently runs hands over her belly.

“It’s been nice,” Meggie says.

The Blues have a rota of who’s responsible for what and she’s been added to the list along with the cooperative’s cooking, cleaning, and bill paying. The hulking female cerulean that let you in is the one on call tonight, to be available if she needs anything.

“They’re still hovering, but they’ve started to settle. We get along. They’re very solicitous. They’ll be good caretakers when the grubs hatch.”

Meggie cues up a pseudoacaepidemic histronicry of secret Jade conspiracy and gently insists the Cerulean join the three of you. She’s careful to keep Meggie between her and Kankri and your shoulders shake with laughter when she finally turns to the screen.

It’s surprisingly engrossing and you imagine that it only passed BR censorship because the Jades know the best security against anyone catching on to what they’re really plotting is to spam so many options that you can’t pick the ridiculous truth from the likely lies.

This is one of the reasons that the Teals and Jades have been so successful as partners and at the institutionalization of their new era. It’s annoying and it’s efficient and it’s probably also why there are more Teal – Jade kismesissitudes registered than ever before.

Kankri arranges the next follow-up and Meggie invites you back.

*

At the next visit she wears a new set of hands, sleek pale golden lines of elegant efficiency with a few flourishes of engraved silver across the backs and swirling down around the finger struts, tipped in short elegant claws. They are smaller than your hands, palms wide, perfectly proportioned for her. The silver flourishes cradle tiny gold stars, each set with a miniscule hatch sign.

“Mechartistes,” she shrugs, with a fond grin. “Bad design pains them.”

*

You already know you like her, but you are a surprised at how quickly you grow to love Meggie. It’s not a quadrant love. You’d do her for free at this point, it’d be fun, it’d be freely given, but you don’t look at her and desire it. You want to hug her, pet the lengthening bristle of her scalp, trace fingers down the trail of intricate spine caps, but you have no desire to protect her and she doesn’t need it anyhow.

You want to know more about her because she’s interesting, but she doesn’t need your pity.

She’d be a worthy adversary, but you can’t imagine hating her.

She’d be a worthy auspistice, but you don’t need it. You’re surprised to find that you’d do the same for her, if she did.

*

It’s the third perigee of her gestation and Kankri starts off with the usual questions, “how are you, how have you been, any changes, concerns?”

“My captain visited,” relays the Magnemetrix, and for a moment it’s not Meggie, but the helmsman of the _BR Golden Compass_. “The ship’s almost done and two psionics have been assigned.

“Some of the crew stopped by and asked if I would anoint eyes before the launch. Some of them asked me to be their planetfall lockbox and left letters.

“It feels strange,” Meggie muses.

*

You find yourself visiting even when Kankri is otherwise committed.

“My moirail was indigo”, she tells you one night when the two of you are alone. “He was a few sweeps older. We knew I’d be drafted to the helm. We were lucky I was a later wriggler and we had an extra half sweep before I was conscripted. His kismesis was older and had just earned command. He didn’t have anyone else we could trust.

“My captain was stern, but tre waited with me until the medicullers put me under. Tre was there when they installed me in the _HIC Grievous Colloquist_. I don’t remember most of the next twenty one sweeps, but when the Summonerists decreed the helms be awoken, and given the choice to be let go, tre was there, and my moirail was three sweeps dead in battle, alliance redacted.”

She doesn’t tell you her moirail’s name, but she’s gazing into her wrought palms at the constellations of hatchsigns set there.

“The ship had to be space docked for a week,” she confesses, like a week of grief for his loss, for her loss, was a shameful thing, and the Magnemetrix cannot meet your eyes.

You are silent. There is nothing you can think of to say and it seems wrong to disturb her thoughts as she composes herself.

The Magnemetrix looks up at you again and when she speaks, the helmsman and the troll before you are one.

“He entrusted me to my captain. My crew entrusted me with their lives. I always bring them home,” she says, like this is the one and only truth, and everything else simply follows.

“When I woke up, they called me the Magnemetrix and the ship had been renamed the _SS Golden Compass_.

“I always bring my crew home. Always.” She cradles her arms over her still flat belly.

*

“Is it strange?” You ask this in her seventh perigee of gestation, her body visibly distended with her clutch of three grubs, shells not yet developed. A ripple disturbs the stretch of her shirt and she is serene. You want to ask, “How can you stand it?”

“It’s not so different from carrying a crew. They’re just much smaller.”

She catches your hand between her own and tells you that you can feel them move if you like. You’re not sure if you’re more fascinated or repulsed. You lay your hands on her belly anyway.

Something moves under her skin and you are now sure that you are equally fascinated and repulsed. You wonder, for the first time, what the grubs will be like. You know that you will continue to visit her until she asks you otherwise. You realize that you are no longer certain that she ever will.

**Author's Note:**

> (The Jongoleur’s speech is perhaps more in touch with the traveling butterfly from Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn than copyright should allow. Of course, The Jongoleur enjoys stirring things up, more than most, and who knows what other radio channels are on in that mind?)


End file.
